which results from belief in Divine Determining; it has afforded me complete patience and caused me to offer thanks." [^142]

[^142]:Nursi, Kastamonu Lahikası, 12.

Bediuzzaman's indefatigable endurance is illustrated by the following memory of Çaycı Emin:

I used to go to Bediuzzaman's house early to light his stove. One day I went it was extremely cold, and without realizing it I had gone two hours before the call to prayer. He was rapt in worship on his prayer-rug. In candlelight in the pre-dawn cold, he was praying in a sad and touching voice, he was pleading, beseeching. Agitated, I waited on my feet for a full one and a half hours. Shivering and trembling, I watched this elevated sight. Finally the sound of the call to prayer began to come from afar, but the Turkish call to prayer of that time. He turned to me and said:

"Emin, you made a great mistake! I swear that I have certain times that should the angels come even, I would not receive them." Çaycı Emin apologized saying he had been misled by the light of the bright moon and said he would not come again before the call to prayer. [^143]

[^143]:Çaycı Emin Çayir, in Son Şahitler, i, 112.

Bediuzzaman was subject to constant harassment. Ankara appointed governors to the province whom they knew would keep up the pressure on him. These were the most oppressive days of the Republican People's Party's rule, when it was pursuing its Westernization programme and struggle against Islam with all its resources. Governor Avni Doğan was appointed in September of the year Bediuzzaman was sent to Kastamonu. He was the epitome of the new breed of officials grown up under RPP rule. An avowed enemy of Islam, he did all he could to inflict torment on Bediuzzaman and his students. He remained in this post for nearly four years and was succeeded in 1940 by Mithat Altıok, whose attitude was somewhat more conciliatory. Bediuzzaman, however, endured all that was inflicted on him by these officials, even on one occasion preventing harm coming to Avni Doğan, and incidentally gaining for himself an important student in the process.

Briefly, in response to the destruction of the mosques and Sufi tekkes and tombs of saints which was carried out with greater ferocity and efficiency in Kastamonu after Avni Doğan was appointed governor, one of the town's shaykhs, Hilmi Bey, known as the Little Shaykh, in order to try and put a stop to the destruction, vowed to kill the governor. He obtained a rifle and laid the plans. Then when all was ready, he was walking plunged in thought before Bediuzzaman's house when there was a tap at the window,